Volume 1 - CH 6.2

They were to meet at a family restaurant along the old Route 17. The distance between the apartment that used to be Fujishima’s home and the single-family home where Kaminaga lived were unexpectedly close. At a booth seat for four people, he waited.

“Has she been in contact with you since?”

“Huh?”

“Kanako and you.”

Kaminaga looked surprised and smiled almost a mischievous smile.

“No, not really. I only heard the news of Kana-chan’s disappearance from her mother.”

“Have you seen my daughter lately?” Kaminaga shook her head. Her muffled voice was drowned out many times by the bustle of the crowd.

“No, I haven’t seen her in about two years.”

“Two years?”

“Yes. I think that’s probably about accurate.”

“Is that so?”

Inwardly, he sighed. It seemed to him that he’d made a mistake in choosing the next lead to follow.

“You’ve known Kanako since elementary school?”

“Well, yeah, I’ve known her since about the fifth grade.”

Fujishima nodded. Seven years ago, he bought a condominium. That was when the stumbling blocks began. The proud expressions of his wife and daughter, satisfied with the level of the room, flashed across his vision.

“Now I haven’t seen her in years.”

Kaminaga stared up at him, toying with the vanilla ice cream through a straw. A hint of shame peeked out of her tilted eyes.

“It wasn’t like anything happened. We just changed schools and made new friends.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a rumor or not, have you heard anything at all?”

She made a thoughtful gesture but ended up shaking her head.

He had a feeling that any further questions would be futile. The girl in front of him was not even a friend of his daughter’s anymore. As if to confirm that, there was a stark contrast between her and Kanako’s fashionably dressed group of friends.

“I’ve seen her around a few times.”

“My daughter?”

“You know, in like her apartment courtyard.”

Kaminaga licked the ice cream on her long spoon and said in a relaxed manner, “Yeah, I wonder.”

“What do you mean you wonder?”

“No, it’s nothing…” She looked the most mature and thoughtful he’d seen her. Fujishima’s brow wrinkled.

“What are you, trying to play informant?”

“Not really. But normally, you can’t say bad things about your childhood friends.”

“Don’t screw with me.”

Fujishima’s voice was faint. The restaurant was sparsely populated with customers and chatty waitresses. But that didn’t stop him from slapping her across the cheek. Kaminaga’s throat was pumping.

“I’ll do it later. Talk.”

“Right now… is fine. No one would ever think it was a hook up.”

Fujishima handed her a folded 10,000 yen bill that he had pulled from his wallet. She crumpled it up and put it in her pocket.

“Thanks for the help. You know, unlike Kana’s, my family’s poor, so it’s tough. My father’s unemployment insurance is the only thing that keeps us afloat. Even if a high school student works the cash register at the supermarket, it doesn’t bring in much money.”

“Talk.”

Kaminaga mentioned two names. One of them belonging to a man, and the other a woman. Then she began to speak in a sluggish, distant manner.

She spoke of their junior high classmates, who were well-versed in fooling around. They loved to drive and go downtown, didn’t want to go to school early in the morning, and smelled of cigarettes and perfume. In the eyes of most kids their age, they were nothing more than objects of terror. In other words, she hung out with a group of delinquents. She often saw the cars they drove in the neighborhood.

“This was around the third year of junior high. Low riders and big cars, delinquent-looking cars, always parked around the side of our house and playing loud music all the time. You and the school probably didn’t know, but she’s always been like that, Kana-chan.”

Fujishima handed over a sheaf of photographs he had taken from home. They showed a large number of Kanako, her friends, acquaintances, and classmates.

“Which ones are they?”

Eventually, Kaminaga pointed to it. It was a whole class photo cut out of her yearbook. It wasn’t Kanako’s class. Boys and girls were lined up in three rows, standing upright.

The boy, Yasuhiro Munakata, was at the far end of the group photo. He had brown hair and a slender chin. His face, which could be called handsome, was eerily expressionless. The boys on either side of him were probably his friends, and they were staring into the lens with wrinkles furrowing their brows, as if it were a virtue.

“This is too small to make out. How about the snapshots?”

He pointed to the snapshots on the table. All of them had Kanako in them. If they were hanging out, surely they would be there. She stared at them for a moment, then flipped through them. Finally, she shook her head.

“They’re not in these.”

“I expected as much.”

He snatched up the bundle of photos. He had looked through all the albums in Kanako’s room. With such a rowdy bunch of people, he would easily spot them.

“I want my money back. Your story sounds fake.”

Kaminaga sipped her soda calmly.

“I didn’t lie. I’m the only one who knows. I don’t need to be told to prove it.”

“Look, if you lied, just hand it back over.”

“Is a police officer allowed to say stuff like that?”

He didn’t feel like responding to that.

“Well, whatever.”

Now he had to take this girl’s word for it. There was no time or manpower to substantiate him.

He looked down at the graduation photo on the table. The Kanako from junior high school lacked an expression on her face. She was beautiful, and yet she seemed as if she were dead.

“Who’s this guy?”

A graduation photo from another class. As with Nami Endo, he pointed to a black-and-white portrait inserted in the right corner. It was a pale skinned boy with a soft smile on his face. The boy called Ogata who had laughed so familiarly with Kanako. By the time the graduation photo was taken, he was already gone.

“What about him?”

“He was Kanako’s boyfriend. No?”

“Oh, is that it?”

“I heard he killed himself.”

“Well, I don’t know much about it.”

Once again he pulled out his wallet. As her eyes were drawn to it, he stomped on her sandal-clad foot with his leather shoe. There was a short scream. Quickly, he looked around, but the restaurant was still the same.

Kaminaga nodded. A greasy sweat was beading on her forehead. When he let go of her foot, she reflexively raised her leg. Her knee slammed into the table so hard that the glass overturned with the impact. Ice and cold water splashed onto the table. One of the waitresses came flying in with a dish towel in hand. Fujishima smiled, as if everything were fine, and waved her off.

“I think they got along well. Because Kana-chan was…”

Kaminaga looked at the photo of Kanako and the Ogata boy side by side.

“I’ve never seen Kana-chan smile this much.”

“So then, what kind of boy was he? Ogata.”

“Five more small ones will do.”

She peeked upward inquiringly. She made no move to offer her hand. He folded a 5,000 yen bill and put it under the coaster. She stared at it for a moment.

“A herbivore down on his luck.”

“What?”

“People used to say that about him. He was weak and small. Like a rabbit. He transferred to a new school in the second grade, but he had a bad kidney or something and didn’t have any friends. He was always alone, always listening to music with earphones.”

Fujishima looked at Ogata in the photograph. It could be said that he had the complexion of a person suffering from an internal disease. But all of his smiles were bright.

“His family was rich, so he got held up and threatened a lot.”

“My daughter, how did she get on with him?”

“No clue. Seriously. Nobody really knew what Kana-chan was ever thinking.”

He looked at Kaminaga’s face. Her face was scrunched up in fear, but he was not inclined to pursue the matter deeply.

“Kanako had few friends?”

“Well…” Her gaze wandered to the ceiling. “It’s more like there weren’t any.”

Fujishima nodded. When he saw her at home from time to time, she wore a cold air, as if rejecting everyone around her. That was why it was so difficult to accept her with the boy Ogata.

“And then he died. Kanako… how was she?”

“How was she, you ask?”

“Was she grieving?”

“I don’t remember when she heard the news, or the funeral. I think she was probably just going about her daily life. If it weren’t for people’s eyes, maybe she would have been looking at her English flash cards.”

She was blunt, as if she was trying to prevent emotions from spilling out.

“And you?”

“Huh?”

“You also liked this Ogata-kun, didn’t you?”

“Me?”

“Am I wrong?”

“It’s not like that, not at all,” she said with a somewhat melancholy expression on her face.

“Then why do you hate her so much?”

He poked at the coaster sitting on top of the 5,000-yen bill.

“Is this revenge? Against Kanako.”

“I wonder.” Quietly, Kaminaga laughed. “She must have been lonely. Kana-chan changed. In the past, I couldn’t imagine her making friends or hanging out with people.”

There was a loud scream. A woman in a yukata, seated diagonally in front of them, had spilled coffee on her hem and was making a fuss. With that, the girl got up from her seat. Dragging her injured leg, she put on her overcoat.

“Can I go now? I work early tomorrow.”

“Wait. We haven’t even gotten to this yet.” He poked the coaster above the 5,000-yen again.

“You should know by now, right?” She was sniffling and trying hard to hold back tears.

“What?”

“They all had sad faces. That was the case for everyone around her, wasn’t it?”

Kaminaga headed for the exit without taking the money. She made no attempt to hide her crying face. Several customers and waitresses noticed and threw Fujishima curious looks.